My Story, Our Story, and Their Story
by Dreamer Ginny in the Clouds
Summary: Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger have been best friends since the first day they met, but they soon fimd that they both share old ties with an old friend and the new head boy at Hogwarts, Harry Potter. However, he's got his own story to tell, too.
1. Best Friends

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter is obviously not mine, because if it was, I'd be getting a pretty little penny's worth right about now.

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My Story, Our Story, and Their Stor**y** as Told by  
Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ginny Weasley  
_by Dreamer Ginny in the Clouds_

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I didn't get this diary for me since the last time I kept a diary for me didn't turn out so well. You see, I kind of got possessed by a mass murderer in the wizarding world who was using me for my magic and was after my older brother's best mate, but that's a different story. And more importantly, that's _my_ story.

If anyone takes anything at all out of this journal, let it be this: It wasn't my story—oh no! It was _their_ story. I got involved in their story, yes, but that still hasn't made it mine. So here's the fun part, I get to tell you their whole story right here and now and all you have to do is sit back relax, and read.

_Yours, Ginny_

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Chapter One: Best Friends

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"_Yesterday brought the beginning, tomorrow brings the end, and somewhere in the middle we became the best of friends. _" ~Author Unknown

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**September 12****th**

I met Harry Potter when I was just ten years old and he eleven. Sure, I knew all his stories by heart, and I could tell just about anyone nearly every article I'd read about him in _The Daily Prophet_, but even I, little old Ginny Weasley, was totally unprepared to meet him in person. I had stopped breathing when I realized it was _the_ Harry James Potter in the flesh, and had completely forgotten about my temper tantrum of not being able to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry that year, if only to mutter a good luck before he plummeted through the brick wall leading to platform 9¾.

Many people had said that he was only a legend, even if no one saw You-Know-Who since that night, so I didn't think I'd ever see him around, either. They said that he'd been Avdad by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and used up all his magic, so he'd just gone and died. To actually prove them wrong and see him for real… It was like a dream!

It wouldn't be until Christmas that I saw him next, but that didn't stop me from telling my story to everyone from Mr. Diggory to Luna Lovegood, which wasn't much, considering that I lived within a few miles of both, but I didn't get to see very many people besides Mom and Dad in a day. However, they were enough to please me and my talkativeness.

He was raised by a terrible family, Ron, my older brother, told us in his letters home, they were his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon who only cared about spoiling his whale of a cousin Dudley Dursley. He'd been forced to do all the chores and all the cooking and be a general slave to anyone and, sometimes, they hit him. Ronald even mentioned that he lived with seldom a scrap of food and in a cupboard under the stairs, where his whale cousin could stop up and down above him and make bits of sawdust fly in his face and make him have terrible coughing fits. It was terrible, and when I'd learned this, I suddenly hadn't been surprised that he was so scrawny when I'd seen him and his skin so pale. I imagined a poor little boy eating only half of a peanut butter sandwich in the corner of his miserable room under the stairs as his Aunt and Uncle banged on the door and yelled for him, tears staining his beautiful and glossy emerald green eyes.

Now Harry is sixteen years old and I fifteen. He's a year ahead of me just like back then, but that didn't stop me from wondering about him. Ron, although coming back with numerous stories about him during his first year, had never become the inseparable sort of friends with him. He complained that although he got along with all of the guys, it was almost like he wasn't totally interested in what one would call a "best friend". I'd always thought that Ron really was like his best friend, since from what I saw of him during Christmas and that summer before my first year at Hogwarts. Harry had treated Ron and my older brothers like his friend, and me like his little sister. I knew I liked him some, but I could live with not having a relationship with him on a romantic level at the time if he would at least treat me like a sister.

I had especially been looking forward for that first day of school at Hogwarts when I was eleven because then I knew that Harry Potter, my friend who acted more like my big brother than the brothers I currently had, would be there. Sadly, I'd come to some unpleasant news that day I boarded the Hogwarts Express. It turned out that Harry had transferred to a school somewhere in Bulgaria because that's where his parent's friend, Remus, had decided to move to after he'd taken Harry away from the Dursleys with the help of a secret organization I would later become familiar with (and secretly join) know as The Order of the Phoenix.

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"_Now I'm heels over head,  
__I'm hangin' upside down,  
__Thinking how you left me for dead,  
__California bound._" ~Heels over Head (Boys Like Girls)

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I haven't seen him since. But I've been making friends and becoming myself ever since. In fact, my best friend is Hermione Granger, no matter how much of a dork she may be. We met on the train that year I first came to Hogwarts. Ron had never said anything about her and I'd found out that it was because she was a new student at Hogwarts who'd attended Beauxbatons Academy of Magic for her first year. She was muggleborn and her Father had decided to move his dental practice to London, which meant that her whole family would move back along with the practice and that she'd than have to go to Hogwarts for the rest of her magical schooling.

I have to confess that I don't think I would have talked to her much if it were not for the fact that I couldn't find Luna Lovegood, my childhood friend, and that Ron had abandoned me for some Dean Thomas fellow. I hadn't any place to sit, so I just sat in the first compartment that looked comfortable enough and with at least one person there.

Hermione had had her eyes closed with a book open on her lap, but I knew she wasn't sleeping. She looked to be more at peace with herself than anything. I studied her curiously, wondering how someone could have such wildly bushy brown hair and cheeks like a doll. Granted, she wasn't near the prettiest girl I'd seen (which so happened to be me) but she still made me take a second look at her, what with her tan skin and fit frame.

"What are you staring at?" she asked curiously, her eyes still closed.

I blinked. "How do you do that?" I asked her.

"Do what?"

"Know that I'm staring at you when your eyes are closed."

The corners of her lips curled and she flipped a page in her book, her eyes finally opening to reveal rather ordinary brown eyes. "You've stared for an awful long time, that's why," she said, slightly annoyed and slightly teasing, "Who are you anyway?"

"Ginny Weasley," I told her. "Do you know Ron Weasley?" She shook her head and I stared at her with a puzzled expression on my face, "Well, he's my big brother. I have six, actually."

At this, she lifted one of her brown furrows. "Six older brothers?" she said incredulously but then proudly added that, "I'm an only child."

"Lucky," I mumbled quietly so she couldn't hear.

After that we'd simply talked about each other and ourselves. Somehow, we just clicked. Ginny Weasley, the attractive girl with enough brothers to scare off even the cockiest of players, and Hermione Granger, the baggy-clothed, bookworm who was better than everyone else at school and took full advantage of it, but had never even had her first date, were best friends. It sounds crazy, doesn't it?

Well, it doesn't matter to me anymore, because I still look up to Hermione since she's gotten me out of every jam I've ever been in and tells me what I can expect to appear in my coursework every year in school, as she's in the grade above me. Of course, this is all after much persistence and bugging by myself, but no matter.

Now you're probably wondering why I'm talking so much about Harry Potter. Well, I'm getting there diary, I am. Let's just start at the beginning of today, when I was so rudely awakened by a certain best friend of mine.

"Ginny!" Hermione said as she yanked my knitted blanket off of me. I was only wearing a tank top because the previous night had been very hot.

I groaned at her, rolling to one side and stuffing my pillow over my head. Hermione took that away form me, too, though. There was no way she was waking me up an hour early on a Saturday—oh no! Especially when she did this every Monday through Friday. Actually, I was kind of shocked, especially since she usually waits until lunchtime to wake me up on the weekends because I always stay out until curfew ruins my fun.

"Hermione Jean Granger you'd better have a good reason to wake me up before eleven on a Saturday!" I said annoyed.

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"_Love is blind. Friendship tries not to notice._" ~ Anonymous

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Hermione was hardly listening, as she was already opening the curtains and letting the beast that was those golden rays of sunlight burn holes through my sparklingly, dazzling brown eyes. This was the point in time at which I would usually begin to hear Lavender and Parvati groan in annoyance as well, but because Hermione was head girl and the head boy hadn't arrived to school yet, I was taking up residence in his dormitory. Usually, the head girl is in her seventh year, but Hogwarts had to make a few modifications last year.

Right now, everyone in the whole of the United Kingdom is in the middle of the second wizarding war against the returning You-Know-Who. I'd write down his name, but it gives everyone the creeps, including me. At the rate that people are dying, they needed more, and desperately. So it was decided for that year that all the seventh and sixth years would graduate early and work for the ministry of magic; no other options given. Thank Merlin Hermione was still a fifth year last year, and I a fourth.

There was a lot of protest from everyone, but we all knew that they desperately needed people to fight the war that was killing off all the great people of past generations. What can you argue against that? They needed people to fight, and Hogwarts had them.

And when the September 1st arrived once again? Hermione and I went to school as usual, only to find that for the first time in Hogwarts history that a sixth year was made the head girl. They also said that there was a mandatory dueling class added for all years, and that we'd have to double up on classes like Defense Against the Dark Arts.

"But I do have good reason, Ginevra Molly Weasley," she teased, grabbing me an outfit she knew I loved and snapping me out of my thoughts; the red shirt that hugs my curves that I bought at the thrift shop with some jeans. "The head boy is coming today, and early, which means we need to clean up your mess in here before he comes."

"I hate it when you have reason." I spring out of be and get dressed quickly before popping some gum into my mouth and start brushing my hair as Hermione makes the bed, something I'd _never_ do here at Hogwarts, since the house elves take care of that. But this is house elf right supporting Hermione we're talking about, the same Hermione who'd wear her favorite stripped-shirt with suspenders.

She started stuffing my nail polishes into my makeup bag as I said, "You're not just going to kick me out of your luxurious home, are you? I could always sleep with you in your bed. Unless," I begin with a glint in my eyes, "the new head boy wants me sleeping with him in his bed."

"_Ginny!_" Hermione scolds, "Over my dead body will I let you into this room again." I fake pout and put down my brush, beginning to help Hermione get rid of all of my stuff. "But you can sleep in my bed, I suppose. Just don't sleep in your knickers anymore."

We both laugh and I suggest that we take our wands out and finish the rest of the cleaning quickly, so we do and soon all that's left to move are my clothes to Hermione's room. This, however, is also done quickly. Hermione gives me the two top draws of her dresser and half of the closet, which I can live with. However, I don't think that she liked the fact that I put all of my makeup on her perfectly cleared vanity, but of course, she didn't say anything.

"Rommies again," I said with a sigh of content, and then flop back onto Hermione's perfectly made bed. It all reminds me of our days rooming in the pits of the girl's side of the Gryffindor common room with two make up crazed gigglers. "It's just like old times."

Hermione snorted. "You're not the one cleaning up after your best friend's messes."

"I am not that messy!" I replied, sitting back up. "_You're_ just a perfectionist."

"So what if I am?"

But before we can get into a good mock fight, there's a knock at the door that startles us both. Hermione grabs her black robe off of her seat and puts it on before rushing to open the door. Professor McGonagall is standing there in her usual poised posture with her usual spectacles and witch hat on.

"Good morning, Ms. Granger."

"Good morning Professor," Hermione instinctively replies in that obedient good-girl voice she uses with every adult she meets.

McGonagall looks over her shoulder and spots me, too. "And good morning to you as well, Ms. Weasley." I wave back with a smile. She smiles in return before returning back to Hermione.

"As you know, this year's head boy is arriving today. He's already here, so I'd like you, Ms. Granger, to go down and greet him and show him where all his classes shall be. Normally, I'd do this part myself, but I have a meeting to attend to." And after going over some details with Hermione, McGonagall is gone and I'm ready to meet Mr. head boy.

Since Hermione knows I wouldn't miss this in a million years she just gives me a look that tells me to get my little behind out the door so she can get a move on, and I do. She follows me down the halls of Hogwarts as we race to McGonagall's office outside of the Gryffindor common room.

As expected, I'm the one who opens the door. But I was not prepared for exactly what I was going to see. I expected some bookworm like Hermione with a nerdy hairstyle and that weak look to him, but what I got was far from what my imagination could conjure up. Standing there staring straight at me are a pair of emerald eyes I never thought I'd see again.

"Harry!" I screech in excitement, and before I know what I'm doing I've flown myself into him and have my arms wrapped around him in a tight embrace like I've know him forever, which I haven't, but it feels that way. But, to my dismay, he didn't really react. So, for the second time in 60 seconds, what I had expected again failed me. Wow, I'm really off my game today!

He sort of patted my back and then stepped back with a confused expression on his face. "I know people are pretty excited to see me because of the scar, but they usually don't hug me. That's a first," he jokes bitterly.

I feel my cheeks burn red from embarrassment and also because he was damn hot. I mean, I remember him looking good, but never this good. What with the way his hair looks like he just ran a mile, and how his lank figure gives him broad shoulders and… I realized I was staring at that point, as did he. His eyes swiveled down my body and up again in a split second, although he looked not as un phased as most boys who did this would be. Maybe all those chocolate frogs have caught up with my curves or something?

"No, I know you," I say pointedly, in an almost sing-songy voice. If a guy is cute, than forget it. "I'm Ginny Weasley, remember? Ron's—"

"Right," he cuts me off, and with a slight edge to his voice asks, "So, I'm guessing you're the head girl?"

It is at this point that I remember Hermione standing by the door and turn to look at her as I say, "No, that's my friend Hermione Granger. But I do…" Harry walks past me like I'm a fallen leaf and sticks out his hand to shake hers.

"Hey, I'm Harry Potter, nice to meet you." But Hermione is barely able to take his hand. In fact, instead of the cool and collected Hermione she usually is, she looks almost like she can't breath or something as she stares back at Harry with her shaky hand bobbing up and down in a monotonous way.

Her lips go dry before she awkwardly sputters out, "Her-Hermione!" and lets his hand go only to clutch it with her other one as if his hand was a poison of some sorts.

He just smiles back and gets a good look at her and you could tell that it was making Hermione nervous somehow and suddenly he makes me second guess his words by saying, "Wait a minute, I know you!" with his eyes going wide and his whole face breaking into rays of sunlit joy.

Now, this sort of thing annoys me, because most likely, he doesn't know Hermione, but he does now me. Or maybe I was wrong all along and we weren't friend at all and he didn't care about me and…

"N–no you don't!" Hermione replies, stepping back. "You know Ginny. Ginny Weasley, you two meet at the burrow because Ron was your best friend and—"

Harry steps closer. "Well, maybe I do know her"—oh _now_ he admits he knows me—"but I know you. You're Hermione Granger and your parents were dentists and you always read fairy tale books in the corner of the library!" Hermione looked back at him like he'd slapped her across the face.

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"_A true friend stabs you in the front._" ~Oscar Wilde

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This news, however, gives me a very opposing reaction. I go by my first instinct, and that had been to laugh my head off. This got me the fiercest glare Hermione could muster and another baffled look on Harry's face.

"Are, are you _kidding me?_" I said while gasping for air and holding my sides, "_Hermione _reading fairy tale books? She always says that that's just false hope for children!"

Harry's whips back around to Hermione. She looks so ashamed, like a small lamb who's eyes just got two times bigger, and who's face is brightened by a vibrant shade of pink gracing their skin. But then Hermione Granger doesn't do what she would do. She doesn't snap into overdrive and fight for herself like I've seen her do when Draco and his goons decide to pick on her. She turns around and runs back down the hall to the head's dorms. And I am left alone, feeling like a jerk because I'm still fighting off my laughter, and staring at Harry's crinkled face.

The rest I can write down later. All you need to know is that today, I wasn't who I was supposed to be. In fact, today I didn't even feel like Hermione Granger's best friend. Today I felt like an asshole.

_Yours, Ginny_

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**Author's Note:** Wow. I loved this. It was an idea I had a month ago and left gathering cobwebs before I began to really focus on writing it. I like it, though. Ginny is great and very fun to write for in her perspective.

_Ginny_


	2. Old Ties

**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter is obviously not mine, because if it was, I'd be getting a pretty little penny's worth right about now.

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My Story, Our Story, and Their Story as Told  
By Hermione Granger, Harry Potter, and Ginny Weasley  
_by Dreamer Ginny in the Clouds_

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So, it's a little girly for a guy to have a journal. Oh well. Where the hell else am I supposed to write down what happened? It's not like guys talk about feelings or anything stupid like that together - not about stupid stuff like getting embarrassed, at least. Besides, Remus says these could be important when fighting Voldemort someday.

But really, I'm keeping this journal so I can truly remember my days at Hogwarts. I went here during first year, but I feel like I hardly even remember anything, even though those were some of the best days of my life. My parents went here, after all. And so, I, Harry James Potter, here by tell you our story.

_Signed, Harry._

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Chapter Two: Old Ties

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"_Moving on is simple, it's what you leave behind that makes it difficult."_ ~Author Unknown

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Let's get some things straight before I begin. _TheProphet _publishes so many lies that even I'm constantly trying to decipher fact from fiction myself. First off, no, my Mother did not have some sort of affair with Remus Lupin, my current guardian, which caused my birth. I mean, honestly, I've seen my Father in plenty of pictures and I look just like him. And secondly, I didn't get my last girlfriend pregnant. She got her own self knocked-up with some bloke she found at a pub that she'd been cheating on me with. Yeah, it's upsetting and I can't say I'm not upset, because I kind of thought she was the one, too. They come and go, I guess.

Now that all of that is out of the way, it would only seem fitting to start from the very beginning. I am the son of Lily Evans and James Potter, who died when I was only around two years old, leaving me to grow up with an awful family - the Dursleys. The family consisted of my Aunt Petunia and her whale of a son, Dudley, and husband, Vernon, but that didn't make them treat me any better. I was in charge of cleaning all the main living areas and making breakfasts along with mowing the lawn, gathering the mail, and doing the laundry. All of these chores left me only a few times where I was free to walk to the local park, only to come home to my uncle being upset that a car hadn't run me over or something. I know, sounds scarily like Cinderella, right? Except I'm not as good looking.(Sorry, I randomly wanted to put that in. If you don't like it, take it out again, I won't be offended. It just popped into my head, sorry!)

My only escape was school, but even there, Dudley could still use his weight to throw me around and get all the other kids on his side. But then something amazing happened - I actually decided to start studying hard in year six(year six is the English equivalent to your fifth grade) and ended up in a special class for those with better grades, one that Dudley's poor grades would need a miracle to make in. I was completely thrilled, to say the least, but my aunt and uncle just said that there must have been some sort of fluke in the grading system because there was no way that I could outsmart Dudley in anything. Fat chance, and I knew that.

That's where I met the first friend I'd ever had. We met the first week of school, when it was raining outside during break-time and I hadn't felt like getting yelled at for coming home with my school uniform wet. So, I'd headed to the library, because on rainy days we wereallowed to mingle in each other's classrooms. Naturally, Dudley wouldn't dare go near the library, so I figured it would be a safe place to hide, but, just in case, I went to the very back where the books for the smaller children were, only to find a girl of my own age in my own class hunched over a pair of books laid out next to each other.

She had messy brown hair that had been especially frizzy that day because of the rain, and she didn't wear the summer skirt like the girls wore, but the winter one that went four inches or so below the knees. I tried hard to remember her name or something she'd said, but only came up with the correct answers she always gave in class.

So, I went with the most obvious thing I could have thought of and said, "Hi."

Her head snapped up to look at me with a start, a sudden fear glinting in her brown eyes for a moment, before she peered into my deep pools of emerald green and relaxed. "Hello," she replied simply, looking at me curiously. "You're Dudley Dursley's cousin, right?"

I hesitated before my face turned sour and I nodded. "Yes."

This answer made her gaze stiffen and shift so that she wasn't really looking at me. "He pushed me into the mud yesterday," she said simply, but I noticed the hint of sadness in her voice.

"He did that to me, too, twice more on the way home," I tell her as I take a seat across from her. For the first time, she smiles. I notice the books she's looking at: a fairy tale book next to a non-fictional book about the possibility of paranormal abilities.

She later told me her name, Hermione Granger. Her parents were dentists and she lived some miles away from the school, but her parents insisted she go there. She also had a habit of reading fairy tales or about them every single day, or, on more rare occasions, she'd just read out of our textbooks on some random section I didn't pay much mind to.

Every day after that, we agreed to meet in the library during lunchtime, and we did, for a whole month straight, rain or shine. But soon Hermione noticed how I'd stared at the other kids swinging on swings and playing football outside, and how I longed to be with them, Dudley or not. Cowering in fear of him was not to my advantage anyway, as he bullied me twice as often at home now. I wouldn't dare tell Hermione this. In fact, I didn't tell Hermione anything about my home life, only because I knew she would say or do something that would get me taken away from the last connection to my parents that I had.

She slammed her book shut and stood up. "Where are we going?" I asked, putting down the night's math homework.

She fixed the ruffles in her skirt and pulled up her tube socks a bit before replying, "Outside of course. Don't you want to go?"

I did want to go. Without another word I followed her down the hall and out the door to the blacktop. I was awed by the playground, even if I'd seen it a dozen times, and went straight for the tetherball since no one was there. I took a good smack at it and called for Hermione to come over.

She trotted to me and we hit the ball back and forth, occasionally hitting one another in the sides or missing. But we were having fun, and it looked to be like no one minded us at all. Then, however, we got a bit too into it, and the ball came crashing into my face, breaking my whimsically round glasses in two. The whole world turned blurry, so I didn't see Dudley come up from behind me and pick up my glasses.

"Hey Harry, did you finally get a girlfriend?" he teased, waving the blurb of black I knew to be my glasses above my head.

"No," I said, trying to stay calm, "Now give me back my glasses!"

His group of friends snickered. "Yeah right, Potter," they all cooed in mockingly annoyed tones.

I hadn't expected what came next. I only heard the familiar _woosh_ of the tetherball and Dudley's gasp as he stumbled backwards, dropping my glasses. I dove for them and retreated back inside the school building with Hermione's light tread following.

"My glasses," I said in between pants from the exhaustion of running and being outside in the sun. I held them up for her to see and she examined them closely before taking them out of my hands.

She glanced around the hallway as if someone was going to see her doing something she wasn't supposed to. "Harry," she told me, as she dug through her pocket, "I'm about to show you something, but you can't tell anyone what you've seen." My eyes were beginning to ache from the blurry world around me, so I simply nodded.

I watched carefully as Hermione took a shaky breath and pulled what appeared to be an ordinary stick out of her pocket. She placed my glasses on the ground and pointed the stick at them. "_Occulusreparo!_"

My eyes opened wide when a puff of air escaped the stick and my glasses magically repaired themselves. I knew they wouldn't last long, since I broke them on a regular basis, but they were still fixed. And fixed not by tape but by… _magic_, something I knew nothing of at that time.

Suddenly I understood why she always read fairy tale books. It was because she was trying to decipher her own powers. I always thought it was because she just believed in magic and stuff, not because she could actually do it.

"You're... You're a witch!" I nearly screeched as I put my glasses back on.

Hermione sheepishly stared back at me and nodded, but I wasn't convinced. Being a witch sounded amazing! "That's brilliant!" She just looked at me for a while before we both broke into huge grins and began laughing as though everything was the same.

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"_After being in Harry Potter, I believe a bit more in magic than I did before."_ ~Rupert Grint.

* * *

And those are the things I remember about Hermione Granger; the good things, at least. The times that made me the happiest kid in the world were all with her. All with my only best friend, Hermione Granger. And the rest? The end of the story? I don't like to remember that.

I can also tell that the situation I'm in right now is not something I'll want to remember. I mean, if I ever saw Hermione after what happened, I kind of expected her to smack me in the face or blast me to oblivion with her powers, but instead she ran. Maybe I didn't know her as well as I thought I did.

But, either way, I was stuck with Ginny, the crazed fan-girl type that was convinced that she knew me. You know, come to think of it, she did look a little bit familiar. I turned to stare at her curvy figure and cute freckles. I think if I had seen her before I'd remember her just because she was that gorgeous. But I had to be difficult and ask her, as if nothing had happened with Hermione, what her last name was.

"Weasley," she said hopefully, "Ginerva Molly Weasley."

"Yeah," I replied, still in a daze from the world that was moving too fast around me. "I do know you, you're Ron's little sister. I still talk to Fred and George sometimes," I add.

She incredulously stares back at me as though I've just offered to grant her childhood dream. I snap her out of it by saying, "Where's the head's dorm? I'm kind of worried about Hermione." Correction. I was very worried about Hermione, even though I hadn't seen her in seven years. Hey, a best friend is still a best friend, I guess.

* * *

"_A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down."_ ~Arnold H. Glasow.

* * *

After another odd stare, she glided past me in this beautiful way of walking and soon we're nearly flying down the hallway. It seemed apparent that McGonagall's warnings earlier to be delicate with the head girl were correct, but I hadn't exactly expected all of this to happen in less than five minutes. But that was typical Hogwarts, if my memory was correct.

We arrived at a portrait I'd remembered passing by too many times that it blended in with the others in the common class of moving pictures at Hogwarts. But suddenly the fair skinned witch with curly red hair only tamed by a wreath of leaves at the top became vibrant and much more special than the others as her amber eyes stared down at us. Magical recognition, I supposed. But either way, just the sight of her in that almost translucent gown made me swallow some invisible liquid in my throat and my face burn. Damn hormones.

"So you're the head boy," she curiously asked in a quiet, gentle voice like an aged Mother would speak in. Her head cocked to the side, a few butterflies in the picture sitting on her stirring and taking graceful flight.

Ginny nodded. "Yeah. This is Harry. Harry, Lady Emily. Lady Emily, Harry." She gestured as she spoke, her pale hands swaying back and forth in an almost hypnotizing motion.

"Hi," was all I could manage to choke out between the two women surrounding me.

Lady Emily chirped up that, "You're very curious a boy, aren't you, then? Password, please?"

At this point Ginny had noticed the mix of confusion and disorientation on my face and explained in a calm voice that the password was _whomping willow_. Emily gave a slight gasp, exclaiming, "Not so loud, dear! Someone may hear," before she opened up and let us inside.

Even though I only got a moment to glance around, it was very apparent that the head's common room was lavishly decorated in the Gryffindor colours, probably because this year's heads were both from that house, as I recall Professor McGonagall mentioning.

Ginny moved swiftly down to the farthest door from the entrance and knocked on it while I waited behind her. There was no answer. I gave it a go and rapped my knuckles against the door, the sound not as delicate as Ginny's. "Hermione?"

"Go away, Harry!" she howled back in a manner I was not expecting, making me jump. Ginny gave a little sigh.

She pressed herself the door and said, "Hermione, it's just me, Ginny, here. I think you're hearing things because you're upset. Please open the door."

There was a rustling and the sound of sniffling before the door was opened wide. Hermione was standing there in all her Gryffindor glory, knees weak, hands clutching a Kleenex tissue, lower lip quivering, her bushy matt of brown hair sticking to her face, and eyes puffy and red from crying. I felt like someone had stabbed me in the chest because I took in a big breath of air at the sight of her.

Once she realized Ginny was accompanied she quickly raced to shut the door, but Ginny was faster. Her small foot jammed itself between the door and the wall and was nearly squeezed out of her shoe by how hard Hermione had intended to slam it. The door cracked open again, just enough for Hermione to stick her head out and glare at Ginny.

"Gin," she began, but her friend didn't let her finish.

"Please let me in, Hermione." With some hesitation, Hermione opened the door slightly more, just enough for Ginny to shimmy in. It slammed shut afterwards, leaving me alone in the hallway.

It was times like those that I wished I wasn't the good guy and that I wouldn't feel guilty about what I was about to do.

I briskly walked back up to my trunk and flung it open, revealing an array of pictures on the top, most of my parents or people from the Order, with a few of faces I haven't seen in a while. I pushed all those aside, now in search for a picture I hadn't seen in a while.

* * *

_"A photograph is memory in the raw." _~Carrie Latet_._

* * *

I had to go through a small box of pictures without frames to get to it, but I found it. The one picture I ever got with my first best friend. I let my fingers trace the only Muggle photograph I had of a little girl with bushy brown hair and a scrawny boy like me laughing at the back of the library with her Dad's thumb blocking just a bit of picture at the top. Not the best picture ever taken, true, but it's one that I liked to take a look at when I couldn't face the loving eyes of my parents without blowing up with raw emotion.

I creep back down to the door that whispers secrets behind it and slipped the photograph under it. There was a deadly silence that followed and I found myself racing back to my trunk, slamming it shut and taking a seat atop of it.

When they came back out, Hermione had the picture in her hand and has changed not only clothes, but her whole self. Ginny poked her head out from behind her, a look of warning on her face.

"Very cute, Harry," Hermione hissed at me in a voice slightly edgy from just surviving an array of tears. I blinked back at her, as if I didn't know what was happening. She handed me the photograph and straightened her Gryffindor tie. "Let's just get this school tour over with, shall we?"

There's the Hermione I remember; the one that wouldn't waste time on you if you weren't worth it. Sucks for me, I guess.

She gave me a look that challenged if I'd even dare to go with her. I found myself standing up in an almost practiced manner and following her out the door without question. Ginny only looked after us with a small wave and I couldn't help but get the feeling that the arrangement was premade.

"Miss Granger?" I heard Lady Emily's voice ring out like a delicate ripple on water. Hermione abruptly stopped, me nearly clashing into the back of her, and turned to look at the portrait.

"Are you all right, dearie? It's particularly nosy of me, but I can't help but develop a special," she clicked her tongue in a radiant way before gracefully stumbling out the word, _"'bond'_ with the heads. And you children are so much younger…"

Hermione's gaze softened as she replied in a voice almost as whimsical as Emily's that, "I'm fine, Lady. Thank you for your concern." The girls exchanged a quick smile and we were off again, this time with Hermione treading a delicate tread, a much more content and relaxed look on her face. I couldn't help but catch a small wink from Lady Emily flash out of the corner of my eye, as though she's done something special.

Although I knew most of Hogwarts like the back of my hand, Hermione insisted on making all the rounds to everywhere, including that awful potions dungeon where I was hoping we wouldn't run into to Snape. However, she informed me that we had a new potions professor that year, Professor I was thrown into a most cheerful mood after that.

We also ran into the Saturday after lunch duelling classes. Hermione explained to me that fifth, sixth, and seventh years get a two-hour long duelling class every Saturday after lunch, excluding Hogsmeade weekends. Before lunch the one hour long classes for fourth and thirds years and second and first years take place.

The class was brutal. There were four Professors yelling orders and correcting poise and proper wand movement all the while. It was held out of the ground around the lake, the September son hot on everyone's backs and the grass retaining the distinctive smells of the summer: dead grass, plants with only a faint trace of fragrance, and sticky sweat that clung to one's forhead.

I saw Ginny walk in late and get scolded before abruptly being thrown into a circle of what looked to be fifth years near the edge of the lake practicing the application of the _Oppugno_ spell onto objects one might commonly find in a room. The woman leading them was a shrew of a woman with dark brown hair that flung off her youthful face in soft whisps, caressing a beautiful face that held gorgeous gray eyes. I believe her name was Professor Diggory. I couldn't help but feel a little guilty that I may have been the cause for Ginny's tardiness.

My eyes wandered to a more hectic part of the area where brighter blasts of magic illuminated the open air. That was where I happened to find Professor Snape, his wand smacking a sixth year boy I think I knew to be Seamus Finnigan into a more fitting position to cast a bat bogey hex.

I felt my nose wrinkle up in slight disgust as Hermione tugged on my sleeve only briefly to keep me moving. We were only coming by the lake because it was a short cut to the Astronomy tower form where we'd just visited. It gave me chance to focus on other things happening at this Saturday's class.

Another one of the professors was one with a hard, heart-shaped face that was watching over a few boys aiming spells at each other. Her face suddenly livened when a jelly legs jinx caused one of them to tumble to the ground, Michael Corner from what her shouts indicated, his two best mates, Terry Boot and Anthony Goldstein getting themselves into a fit of laughter. The hair on her head zapped from a brown to an interesting shade of purple. I blinked, realizing she was a metamorphagus; Professor Tonks.

The last of the Professors teaching the class that day, a more charming sort—the Professor Lockheart fellow—saw Hermione and gave her a charming smile before partaking in a duel with a shaky Gryffindor with rosy cheeks and blonde hair. The Professor very suddenly stopped the boy's movement completely with an _Immobulus._

* * *

"_The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today."_ ~Franklin D. Roosevelt.

* * *

A sickeningly real feeling of dread and anticipation hung over the place, despite the occasional bursts of laughter and triumph. It mixed with the poisonous smells of fiery spells and smoky white magical residue in the air to create an almost unreal feel to it, as if it would be very easy to deny and forget about. I glanced over at Hermione, her face grim, skin plain and eyes retaining a dull expression of despair much like many of the other faces in the room.

So this was what living in the midst of a war was like.

_Signed, Harry._

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**Author's Note:** Wow-wee! I had honestly not expected for this chapter to go this way, but golly am I glad it did! EDIT: I had to re-rpload this chapter because my beta pointed out that I had put up the wrong chapter (Major fail), so that's why it ahd so many mistakes at once. I'd also like to thank her for the line about Cinderella towards the beginning of this chapter.

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_Please notice: this story has been beta edited by the lovely __**XTimeGirlX**__. Thank you, and please credit her in your reviews if you are going to praise for the story's grammar or proper spellings._


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